Evening Star Newspaper, February 24, 1935, Page 49

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, FEBRUARY 24, 1935—PART FOUR. ' TREASURES AND TRASH FOUND IN UNCLE SAM’S CELLARS By Don Bloch. EHIND locked doors and “No Admittance” signs in attics, subbasements and forgotten | store rooms of the Federal City | lie tombs of the dead, activi- ties of the live, art, mystery, oddity and romance that the public has never seen. With a pocketful of curiosity and an uncontrollable itch to peer behind closed doors and into dark places, the writer set out to prowl in unfre- quented spots. What follows is a log of that journey, mostly worm's eye view of downtown Capital cellars. | STATE, WAR AND NAVY BUILD- ING.—A tripartite metropolis under- ! ground, with separate sets of laborers for each department. each with their own rest rooms, locker rooms, lunch rooms, paint, electrical, carpenter and | plumbing shops. foremen, superin- tendents—and problems. | In a room all by itself, the White $ouse boiler. which supplies all the heat for the Mansion across the street. | t sports a coat of aluminum paint and | a brass railing around it. squats se- | dately in a hole below floor level and | never gives trouble. It shares quar- | ters with a pompous-bellied little blast furnace, the pet of E. W. Wilson, | building superintendent. He trans- forms brass shavings into name-plates and ornamental fittings in it for the building, as a hobby | The tight little shop of Charles Hel- ler, German keeper of the keys for | the building. No lock has ever defied him in all the years he has been re- pairing and making them. Keys of | fantastic shapes, double-jointed and ancient, hang over his bench, overrun drawers. i A roaring old brick furnace where, twice a day, special employes bring down batches of scratch-pad scribbles and inter-office memoranda, errors and confidential data to be destroyed by fire. These flames live entirely on international and national secrets. A complete ice-house with a ca- Ppacity of 96 300-pound cakes per da A room full of old huge brass hing and door stops. Room 0-52, War De- | partment stores, a cavelive dungeon | with a musty smell and a filigree of | spider webs festooning its records. A red plush-covered dentist chair in one corner of the place. Room 0-38!2, adjutant general's stores, with a chest | and a safe (opened by a set of “false | teeth”), which contain the authentic | relics of another “greatest trial in | history"—that of the conspirators con- nected with the assassination of Ab- raham Lincoln. Here is the material evidence admitted at the trial, all of it, now held by the office of the judge | advocate general of the Army. Phineas ‘T. Barnum is said to have made a bona fide offer of $1,000,000 for the contents of the small wooden chest and a tiny pasteboard box from the safe which together hold these objects. The old library of the Navy, on the fourth floor, once hawked as the chief showplace of the building. Its stained glass dome and ceiling fres- coed in blues, greens, whites and | studded with golden stars, cast a | diffused soft glow over a room where | once our own and foreign admirals, bigwigs and newspaper men fore- | gathered to settle a world’s problems. | In 1922 the books were moved, the library given over to filing cabinets of the Division of Communications and Records. Room 632, up .under the eaves, is | the rarely opened code room, where | secret dispatches and codes of the United States and other nations are | closely guarded. Only two men ever enter here and they go in and come out together. That ball that winds slowly up the pole and drops suddenly at noon, released from Arlington, is as big as & barrel, made of iron strips covered with canvas—and, incidentally, pretty ‘well full of holes. For 10 years now it has been the serious duty of one | Toppins, Negro dynamo tender, to wind that ball by hand up the flag- | pole. He keeps count of the bell signals which govern his winding speed by means of an iron nut tally moved up and down an intricate | number board, painted in red, beside | him. | WHITE HOUSE—Open to the public—most of it, that is. Two fea- tures of the engine room under the | northeast wing are of interest, and these the normal visitor cannot see. From one wall a large, wrought-iron extension arm juts out. From it used to hang the huge kettles for boiling | | water in the old ‘days. And where | once they stored coal are two deep marble troughs in the floor. Milk was poured into these to separate and | skim off the cream for earlier White House tables. TREASURY BUILDING.—Down the | elevator and into Uncle Sam's pin | money vault, probably to watch the | writer’s reaction to being surrounded A Star Reporter Finds Relics That Millions of Dollars Could Not Pur- chase—Some Hidden Rooms, Secret Passages and Old-Time Documents. At top, left: Miss Hazel White holding the first book of the Treasury, first Secretary of the Treasury. which was written with a fine quill pen by Robert Morris, 3 It contains all United States financial records from 1781 to 1784. Top, center: Jack Deards, custodian of the Senate warehouse for 43 years, among his Capitol documents. ‘Toj right: Exhibit of evidence admitted at trial of Lincoln conspirators Booth's carbine, Payne's pickax and firearms. used by Payne to slash Secretary Seward. One of the knives was Booti's boot. Relics held by adjutant general. Lower left: Flint-hard bluestone directly beneath front steps of old Post Office Building. three secret rooms of the Capitol. Lower, center: One of the Center, right: Authentic relics of the assassination of Lincoln—Booth’s pistol, pieces of bone and the assassin’s bullet. old Post Office Building. copper plates once used for post Lower right: A one-man exhibitor’s art gallery in All fixtures are hammered from ancient route maps. —Washington Star Photos. as you walk past the southwest cor- ner, is a miniature shooting gallery where Treasury guards practice up on occasion. Nearby, an ice plant with a capacity for turning out 10 tons of 300-pound blocks any day. In the cellar of the Annex, through | the tunnel under the Avenue, are 13 packing boxes, each big enough for & piano, bursting open with bundles of Confederate currency, confiscated dur- ing the Civil War. This is part of a fabulous fortune called, in the files of the Treasury, “Captured and Aban- doned Property.” These boxes of cur- rency (about $15,000,000 worth of it) and a great quantity of jewelry, plate, rare coins and bonds were taken and deposited with the Treasury between 1861-69. and returned to its owners. What re- | mained, from time to time, was auc- tioned off, the last sale being held here in Washington in 1888. Today, in a tiny vault back in under the fifth floor eaves of the building, is all that is left of this forune. In a com- mon shoe box are a dozen mouldy pocketbooks with official notes inside | each, telling, if known, whose property | they had been, and a few coins and | bill containers shaped to be worn 'round the waist, all crinkly and stuck together. In this vault, also, which holds the oldest archives of the Treasury, is the historic First Book of the Treasury, a ‘leather-bound thing of genuine | beauty, written in the fine hand with | most of the stuff has been identified | the Treasury, Robert Morris. I Those Were the Happy Days _“Pin Money Memories” BY DICK MANSFIELD. by a mere $50,000,000 in small change | §§ heaped around. Then the rush of air | from inside the main vaults as the 39 tons of steel door swung open. Aisle after aisle of barred and num- bered monastic cells, each with its walls stacked to the ceiling, four deep outward, with packages of bills, quietly %curing.” “We usually keep -six months to a year’s supply of money, seasoning, or drying out, down here,” volunteered a guide, casually. All to- gether, 16 major cells, each divided and subdivided, filled with money. ELOW the vaults, the “Inspection Area.” Every square foot of this area is honeycombed with electrically- lighted, long, square port-holes, cris- | crossed at intervals for passage of the | guards, Just in case any one tried to | drill up from below. Into another portion of the sub- sasement, lined with obsolete plumbing supplies. In to say hello to John V. Shea, for 46 years in charge of the| Division of Supply where, among other | things, three-quarters of a ton a week | of obsolete paper supplies of one kind | or another are chopped up and pasted | B together into serviceable scratch-pads. | Under East Executive avenue, in case you hear explosions beneath your feet IGNS O°TH® SIMES," REMEMBER THISONE® PENNY ARCADE 024 - AVENW. NOTHING OVER ONE CENT, MOVING PICTURES, 1 ME ¥o HANDKERCHIEF AND [ PRINT YoUR NAME. Ouonomsgu,voe‘rms : OLD, PERFO d \F PAUL GROVES 7 AINT GONNA_s GET THAT EMEMBER WHEN You'p CLEAN THE SNOW FROM THE SIDEWALKS TO S EARN TENCENTS ANOTHEN WALK DOWN YOWN TO THE OLD DIME MOSEOM WHERE THE POST-OFFICE STANDS AT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.—: The writer became so fascinated in watching a tiny trip-hammer chisel away the debris that brought the skeleton of a minor dinosaur to view that he forgot his™ prowling duties. Anyhow, a newspaper confrere had two got they One owl, just done the job very well a little rate, the starlings came back tower room floor is strewn with the bones of starlings. mice good evidence of the owl's industry. OLD POST OFFICE—A Ask one of the old | terranean art gallery! | guards about the starlings. He'll tell | years ago one Thornton Silcott, who | you that only in the last two or three | had been assistant engineer in the | years has the institution been troubled | building’s basement, disappeared sud- | with them. For 15 years no starling | denly in the general direction of Cali- | tool holders, oil can racks, door plates The papa | fornia and was heard of no more.| and peep holes, table coverings, trays, while before. THE story of the Owl Room in the west tower. ventured near the place. he hooted around, then officials | the idea he wanted %o stay. So removed a pane from vne of the windows, and the owl moved in. For | 15 years the owl dynasty remaincd - night a rookie guard shot the or so the story goes. At any The was a quiet fellow and no one seems to remember much about him except his name. By some means he secured the huge engraved copper plates from which the old Post Route maps for the department were printed. Work- ing patiently in his spare time he fashioned picture frames of a score of odd shapes, State seals, broom holders, United States coats of arms, engine room. pieces he made and all and moles, sub- Twenty-nine art work. More than & hundred are still | 1907 that is wanted? A pamphlet on fastened securely to their places by | 50 wide and deep, supports the main | weight of the great clock tower. OLD PENSION OFFICE.—The story here comes out of the cellar. It takes one into that vast first-floor room where, beginning with Grover | Cleveland, many inaugural balls were | held. ~Eight thousand people crowded the hall and balconies that night. But note those towering terra cotta columns. There are 70 all told, 8 of them with circumferences that 3 men, joining hands, can just reach |around. They run to the ceiling, | high above. 5 On their outside they are covered | with a peculiar paint, in imitation of marble. But if y will look closely, from different angles of the hall (sometimes you will have to stand on your head) you will note the faces of earlier heroes of the United States —Washington, for example, is there— and many others, plainly outlined in the flowing paint lines of the pillars. UT strangest of all, 20 of these columns which surround the large interior hall contain leaden | boxes in which Gen. Montgomery | Cunningham Meigs, born 103 years {ago in Georgia, placed Federal archives in 1883. They are less bal- cony supports than the walls of secret chambers containing hermetically | sealed boxes filled with doucments. Note, too, that coat of arms of the | United States, wrought in exquisite in- laid tilework, which is sunk beneath !the floor and covered with glass, in the west end of the great hall. A ‘bras railing surrounds it | SENATE WAREHOUSE.—Slotted | down an alley off Delaware avenue northeast, & rambling, red brick barn has a crazy slant to it that will make | you wonder why it doesn't fall. The | reason for both the slant and the still | upright position of the place is the | same: It is filled to the ceiling with books and pamphlets in piles that | 1ean inside like a thousand towers of Pisa, and the enormous weight of this printed matter anchors the floor and buttresses the walls. It can’t fall— but it has wanted to for years. Here are deposited the publications of every sort put out by the Govern- ment “on credit” to Senators who have never used their quota of them, never sent them to their constituents. They are piled 20 feet high in a chaotic confusion that only Jack Deards, banker of this million-dollar | bookstore for 43 years, knows the key | to. Is it a fish bulletin published in hockworms? On the efficiency of coals | at the navy yard? On the Weather a special screw-extension method he | Bureau in 19217 Or perhaps the Sen- devised for his work. The fine veins of the old post roads and rivers, names almanacs or a batch of explorer's of States, counties and towns are Maps visible on every piece of this unique ator has sent for the 1913 nautical “Hi,” shouts Jack to one of his helpers. “Bring me out from under owl who, years before, came investi- | But he left behind him a cellar full | moulding strips and base board end on the west tower. ‘Through the years since, ( the quill pen of the first Secretary of | gating for roosting quarters decided | of strange and beautiful objects m: For a night or | of hammered and cut-out copper. He ' the walls, pillars and benches of the |mass of granite, 30 feet high, 50 by ade | coverings. With these he garnished Then there are the palisades of blue | that far north shelf, 'way in under stone, immediately behind the four| the back to the left, one of thase re- odd caves which tunnel in under the | POrts on the cotton tare. There's only front steps on the Avenue side. This three of 'em left. and bring me the one with the writin’ on the cover.” | SUPPOSE EVERY B0OY IN “THE NEIGH BORN00D WILLBE AT THE DIME MUSEUM 70~ LL CLEAN Dee e SNOW ANO Go <0 THE STORE FOR You MRS. TOHNSON For TENCENTS Actieess, LoTER CHURCH N THE THRILLING DRAMA, ¥ UNKNOWN* T DAY 7O SEE, PSSR @ P WHAT DO YOU REMEMBERT 4 N . < WHEN YOUR"DAD! ONSWER TOLAST WEEKS usso}{’o eewao N . QUESTION, L o o roseflin - WHOSE STABLES DID W RaE o o BOOTH HIRE THE HORSE ON ; T o WHICH HE ESCAPED AFTER | SHOOTING PRES. LINCOLNT ELLEHER’S LIVERY STABLES, ON E\GHTH, STREET, N-W. HAT WAS THE LASTNAME OF O PO OF BOER WAR. FAME 2 And the requested report will be there. You can gamble on it. ACK in 1915 more than half the accumulated stock of the ware- house was disposed of. After all Sen- | ators, Representatives and department | heads had levied on the books, those | left in one whole building were sold | for waste paper. More than $1,000.000 | worth of printed matter went north to be chewed up in a Michigan pulp mill. Now the place is overflowing again. CAPITOL BUILDING.—Beneath this venerable structure is a catacomb of ! odd-shaped rooms, recesses and & labyrinth of caves and tunnels no architect in his wildest moments could ever have consciously created Since 1793 it has been growing, cut through, chiseled out and bricked over in such a tortuous fashion that no man not thoroughly familiar with its every turn and twist can find his way out if once lost in its countless burrows and passageways. And no one man, the writer dis- covered, is thoroughly familiar with the Capitol cellars. Through the dingy cavern, thgn | occupied by several silent gnomes en- | grossed in a game of dominoes, the | writer plunged into the clutter of vaults beyond. Most of the tiny rooms, which run off in crescent, clover, | square, triangle and indescribable | shapes at every angle, are filled with books—Congressional ~ Records are stored by the thousands down here, and have been gathering dust and oblivion since the early days of the Republic. One room, unlighted except for our flash, revealed a floor and shelves piled with evidence exhibited in forgotten Supreme Court trials—an antique telephone instrument, a rusty type- writer, a rusted bucket once offered in 8 Panama Canal case, stuff from & mining case of 1901. Another room, cold and clammy as a tomb, was shelved with law books, their backs falling off, their leaves yellowed. Un- der a low-vaulted archway, behind the logs which burn in a few office fire- places, was a blank wall of granite. Buried 5 feet in its heart, somewhere, is the corner stone of the Capitol, N 1898 this section, now a series of groined tunnels and caves, was | lifted up bodily, together with an ene | tire hydraulic” elevator and its shaft, by the explosion of a huge gas meter. | Around and around, bumping our | heads on pipes, low arches, bruised on shoulders from turning sharp cor- | "(Continued on Page 8, Coulmn 2.), ¢